


more than you know

by karples



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Accidental Relationship, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-28 09:50:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12603904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karples/pseuds/karples
Summary: Unfinished DickRoy one-shots.





	more than you know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> started out writing it in a world where cry for justice never happened, but other than that, the details are a bit vague. happens sometime during batman incorporated i guess!

i.

A bad night always began with a phone call. Dick knew this, but when Roy’s caller ID illuminated his dark hotel room, he thought: maybe it would be okay. Maybe Roy would invite him to marathon the Rush Hour trilogy with Lian, an avid Jackie Chan fan. Maybe later, Dick would fluff Lian’s pillow and kiss her forehead and tuck her into bed, and he and Roy would orbit each other cautiously, _Thanks for coming, Lian appreciates it, I know you’re in town for a business trip but movie night’s a you-me-and-Lian thing now._

Lian’s crying dispelled whatever hopes and delusions that Dick entertained. “Uncle Dick, Uncle Dick.”

Dick reacted automatically. “I’ll be there,” he promised, already rummaging for his car keys in the bedside drawer. His bike boots smelled like sweat, rain, and dog shit, and the sound that they made on the fire escape was like low clanging thunder. He didn’t know who he was kidding: his boots weren’t separate from him, his boots weren’t running on their own. That was him, all of him, landing with a shuddering impact that scattered the congregation of pigeons on the pavement, jarring himself back into his body. “Lian, can you put your dad on the phone?”

Lian kept crying. “No, no.”

The engine sputtered into life, and the car swung into the street at a dangerous angle, cutting corners fast, a curtain of polluted water surging over the uneven sidewalk. Neighboring highrises interrupted the night sky like rows and rows of broken teeth.

“Okay, I’m on my way. Can you tell me what’s wrong? It’s going to be okay, I just need to know what’s wrong.”

“Daddy won’t get up. He fell down and won’t get up.”

Dick’s chest wasn’t cold, just empty and hollow. Bruce had taught him to assume the worst, but when it came to Roy, Dick always tricked himself into thinking otherwise, as if this time, this one time, this _one time_ , _oh please oh please oh please,_ would be different than the last.

 

ii.

Dick broke into Roy’s house through the kitchen window, where Lian had painted _Uncle D’s Favorite Window_ on the sill. It wasn’t really Dick’s favorite window; that would be the one in the Roy’s bedroom, facing away from the street. The kitchen was just the easiest point of entry, and while Dick enjoyed a good challenge, he wasn’t hankering for one tonight.

Lian bowled into Dick as he hurtled toward the living room. She was red-faced and bawling. Dick embraced her and hefted her onto his hip without breaking stride. _D-d-d-disassociation central, folks!_ he thought in his best Porky the Pig voice. In his peripheral vision, the shadows of umbrellas leaning against dressers stretched like stalagmites. One teetered and burst into vibrant purple bloom, stamped with yellow ducks.

Cast by a neighboring streetlamp, a half-circle of yellow sodium light pooled on the threadbare carpet and second-hand coffee table. Roy was slightly scuffed up but unconscious, which was never a good sign. It meant that Dick was useless. It meant that Dick couldn’t grab a bottle of antiseptic and thread a needle to stopper the blood in Roy’s body. It meant that there were wounds beneath Roy’s skin, behind bone, that Dick couldn’t hope to reach.

Dick pressed his fingers to the underside of Roy’s jaw and felt the tingle of stubble. Roy’s pulse was sluggish, much too slow. He looked vacant rather than peaceful. Lian said into Dick’s shoulder, “Uncle Dick?”

“Yeah?”

“Daddy’s gonna be okay now you’re here, right?”

Tucked behind the lapel of Dick’s coat, the communicator reserved for emergencies beeped over and over. By now, Dick probably had texts from Dinah and Ollie and the rest of the Arrows and ex-Titans, demanding an update on the situation, but Lian was more important.

Dick stroked the arch of her baby-soft skull and hoped that tomorrow wouldn't make him more of a liar than he already was. “Yeah, kiddo, your dad’s going to be fine. Don’t worry. It’s all going to be okay.”

 

iii.

Like a herald, the nurse emerged from the emergency room and roused the small army of aliens, superhumans, non-powered vigilantes, and government agents obstructing the hallway.

 _What a fire hazard_ , Dick thought, a little disapproving and a lot paranoid. Not for the first time, he wished that puberty had blessed him with an extra inch: he couldn’t see anything but an abundance of well-developed triceps and powerful necks. He could’ve moved forward for a better view, but he stuck to the shadows, where he could have his nervous meltdown in peace.

The nurse read off of a tablet: _A recent head injury led to the formation of a blood clot, which was successfully removed at 5:11 am, thanks to quick discovery and quick response time..._

Everyone pivoted as one to stare at Dick: the Arrows, the Titans, even Reggie from the CBI.

So much for avoiding attention. Summoning a tight smile, Dick took the stage. “I'm not the one who called the medical transport,” he said. “Lian deserves that credit.”

The gathering thinned out after the nurse’s announcement. And though Dick had done nothing, nothing, Ollie tearfully clapped him on the back, Conor and Mia nodded at him, Dinah hugged him, and once Dick was alone, Kory--just as giant, just as overwhelming as the day they met--Kory held his hand, her touch steaming warm, the curlicues and elaborate commas of her hair like ozone and smoke.

Tipping Dick’s face toward hers, Kory kissed his forehead and singsonged, “You need some tender loving care--and lots of sleep, my darling.”

Resistance was futile. Besides, Dick had no fight left in him, only a residual ache, some shade of relief. “God, _yes_. Please.” Like a child, he lifted his arms to be whisked away.

Three days later, Dick was replacing the get-well bouquet on Roy’s bedside dresser when Roy regained consciousness and hacked up a lung struggling to speak.

Dick lunged for the glass of water.

“Grade A reflexes,” Roy croaked, pushing Dick’s hand away. His lips were pale and cracked and wet.

Dick averted his eyes and smiled to take off the edge. Roy relaxed, perhaps unconsciously reassured. A lump rose in Dick’s throat.

“My pleasure,” Dick said. “Before you ask, Lian’s with the Santoses. I updated them on the situation and took care of the bills too, since they were due a day ago.”

“Remind me to... pay you back somehow. Take you out for dinner.”

“Going to wine and dine me, Harper?”

“You bet. With candlelight and everything.”

Despite his exhaustion, Roy seemed to have no trouble focusing. Especially on the deep collar of Dick’s shirt.

“Not that I mind the view,” Roy said, mouth twitching, “but how the hell did I get here?”

“Long or short version?”

“Dick. Spare me.”

“You took a hit to the head during one of your patrols, a blood clot formed, and you passed out. Then you had brain surgery and slept for another three days.” Dick flourished. “Voila.”

“You skipped...” Roy coughed and scrabbled for the water glass again. He managed to curl his fingers around it, but Dick guided it to his mouth anyway. The grainy ridges of Roy's knuckles tensed under Dick’s palm. “Mmm. You skipped the dramatic rescue.”

“It wasn’t that dramatic.”

“The shadow of a bat swooping in through the kitchen window...”

“In civvies and a domino,” Dick protested. “More importantly--”

“Can you call Dinah ‘n everyone else?”

“Oracle’s on it. I want you to explain this to me.”

Dick thumbed in the password to Roy’s phone, and Roy’s expression didn’t change. A trickle of shame and self-defensiveness unfurled in Dick’s chest: there were only so many times that Roy could lean on Dick before Dick memorized the way that he typed out his password, the way that he laughed when he was trying not to disturb his dozing daughter, the way that his stubble felt against Dick’s bare shoulder, hot with friction.

The recent calls list expanded under Dick’s touch. Silent, Dick showed the screen to Roy.

“She called me after she called the medics,” Dick said, almost accusatory. “Shouldn’t she be calling Dinah or Ollie instead?”

Roy shrugged and lifted an elbow; the IV line snagged on the dresser, and Dick freed Roy’s arm so he could scratch his unshaven chin.

“She must’ve wanted to hear your voice,” Roy said. “Would’ve wanted the same myself.”

Dick sincerely doubted that, but he couldn’t summon the magic words, couldn’t voice them. “Is the staring a point of reference thing?” Dick said instead.

“Is the what a what?”

“You’re staring. At me,” Dick added, as if that required further clarification. “You’re coming out of a three-day coma, I’m a clear object to focus on. Hence, I’m a point of reference for you... as you reorient yourself.” Roy raised an eyebrow. “It sounded better in my head.”

“I _am_ staring at you,” Roy answered. “It’s not a point of reference thing.”

The gravel lot, visible through the window curtains, appeared suddenly fascinating. Dick ruffled his hair and sighed, reminding himself that recently-comatose-Roy had little to no mind-mouth filter. Roy didn’t know what he was implying. He just didn’t know, he couldn’t. “Right.”

Roy touched Dick’s knee with a broad, careful hand. “Listen, Dick... I’m not gonna be in top shape for a while. Come stay with me and Lian.”

Excuses, excuses. “I extended my hotel reservation for another week.”

“You know you’re always welcome to crash at my place.”

“I don’t want to intrude--”

“I’m _inviting_ you, Dick. Givin’ you access to my collection of ‘80s Hong Kong blockbusters and Hollywood cult classics.”

Roy was fronting hard, trying not to seem overeager, but he was transparent to Dick anyway. In this moment, Dick was transparent to him. They could have been ghosts, so see-through that they might not have been seeing each other at all, only what they’d expected to see, phantom images and pale imitations of the people that they should be. Dick didn’t _want_ that to be the case, but what if? What if? What if?

“That’s tempting,” Dick said at last.

Roy squeezed Dick’s knee. “Are you tempted?”

Dick considered the dark thorns and petals glinting like bruises at the bottom of the trash bin, the weed-ridden lot, the wall clock with its hands splayed like a pencil moustache. The steady heat of Roy’s palm through Dick’s stirrup pants, the puckered shrapnel scars on Roy’s clavicles. Dick had kissed all of them except for one, glossy and new, maybe a souvenir from a recent JL mission.

Gently, Dick covered Roy’s hand with his. For Dick, throwing his body into the line of fire was easier than taking chances with his heart, but, well. Here he was.

“I think your release date’s at the end of this week,” Dick said.

Roy blinked at his fingers, now intertwined with Dick’s. “Yeah. Great. I mean, how should I know? I just woke up.”

“Okay, point,” Dick laughed. Roy smiled right back at him. “Well, whenever it is, I promise I’ll drive you home.”

 

iv.

“No!” Lian shouted, her fists on her hips. “Wrong!”

“Volume, sweetie, your dad’s sleeping.” Dick adjusted the windshield of the Lego Batcopter. “What’s wrong?”

Clearly upset, Lian waved a tiny Green Arrow figurine in the air. “His face is wrong! Wrong!”

Dick peered at it and schooled his expression into one of neutral interest. Printed on Lego Ollie’s face was a soul patch, an exact replica of Roy’s during the Outsiders.

“Well, I think it’s perfect,” Dick told Lian, nestling Green Arrow in the Batcopter. Now if anything could give Bruce a heart attack, it would be Green Arrow in the pilot seat of the Batcopter. “Not realistic, but perfect.”

“It’s not _right_. Like Uncle Bruce isn’t right. See!” Lian rooted through her toy box for her miniature Batman, a torrent of bright blocks cascading onto the carpet. The deluge overwhelmed both Superman and Wonder Woman--hypothetical Crisis material--and Red Robin surfed the Great Flood on what looked like the disassembled pieces of an earlier iteration of the Bat-Sub, pre-retractable wings.

Dick frowned, folding his arms. “What did I say about making a mess?”

“That I gotta clean it up,” Lian parroted. Popping up, she brandished the Batman figure in Dick’s face. “Lookit!”

The Lego Batman was smiling. _Beaming_ , really, and flashing a neat row of teeth.

“Cute,” Dick said, laughing.

“Wrong!”

“And wrong,” he agreed, even though he smiled plenty under the cowl. He stood and stretched, joints cracking like popcorn. “How about you clean up while I check on your dad? Then you can pick a movie to watch before bedtime.”

Normally the prospect of a movie was enough to divert Lian’s attention, but she remained still and huddled amid an anarchic landscape of Lego pieces, all sticky as children’s toys often were.

“Is something wrong with Daddy?” Lian demanded, seizing the hem of Dick’s sweats. “Isn’t Daddy okay now?”

Dick had forgotten about how volatile children's moods could be. His stomach swooped at the look on Lian’s face; he’d seen it before on Damian, so briefly that if Dick had been anyone else, he’d have called it a trick of the light. But Dick wasn’t anyone else, and he recognized that it was something more complicated than fear, more vulnerable than a need for comfort. It was faith--faith that Dick would rectify the situation, faith that it would be fine because Dick said so.

Of course that wasn't true: if Dick had the ability to fix everything wrong in the world, then Roy wouldn’t have been injured, they wouldn't have temporarily lost Bruce, and countless others wouldn’t be six feet under. Lian, however, didn’t know that. Adults were omniscient and omnipotent, Daddy was a _superhero_ , and Uncle Dick was Daddy’s kind of maybe ex-boyfriend who slept over a lot like a real boyfriend did and made great soup.

Dick entertained the impossible hope that Lian could stay small and soft and unbruised forever. The thought that she _had_ to learn this lesson, that he couldn’t shield her forever, lanced Dick through the heart, an almost physical species of pain.

Dick cleared a space for himself with his foot and crouched to meet Lian’s gaze. His knees creaked with the floorboards when he shifted weight. “Lian, your dad’s okay. I just like to fuss over him, that’s all.”

“Is he hurting a lot?”

“Not too much,” Dick admitted.

“I don’t want Daddy to hurt at all,” Lian said.

The fist in Dick’s chest clenched tight. “Lian...”

“I don’t want Daddy to hurt at all,” Lian repeated, and the tears started to flow in earnest. “I don’t want, I don’t want,” she hiccupped, over and over, clutching her Lego Batman.

Dick scooped her up, gathering her close. Her frantic pulse hammered against her ribs and into his, and she clung to his shirt as he mopped up the salt and snot with his sleeve. “It’s okay, honey, I’ve got you.” He migrated to the couch and set her in his lap. “Uncle D’s here. Your dad’s alright, kiddo, trust me...”

Eventually, Lian exhausted herself crying, slipping into a dreamless sleep. Dick stared at the ceiling for what felt like an eternity--memorizing the cracks in the plaster, the milky sheen cast by the kitchen light on the plaster, the rattle of the heater...

As the night deepened, the cracks grew darker and thicker, cavernous and yawning. Dick felt the drop to unconsciousness as a visceral lurch in his gut, the floor vanishing beneath him.

Around four AM, Dick awoke to a fleece blanket tucked over him and Lian. Lian had a stuffed green dinosaur wedged under one arm, a patched-up penguin under the other. The Legos had been stowed away, and the room was unlit, a line of moonlight stealing in like a practiced thief.

Roy was sitting on the floor, sagging against the couch. He’d swaddled himself in a patchwork quilt, two of his fingers hooked into Lian’s curled palm, his forehead pressed to Dick’s. His mouth was gentle and crooked, close enough to kiss.

Dick was hazy and uncomprehending. Dick was frozen, pinned like a butterfly on a board by the scent of Roy’s skin, Roy’s sweat, Roy’s soap in his nose, pervading his lungs, so fully that he forgot to breathe, he was dizzy, he was breathless, he was in love.

Roy’s hair stirred when Dick exhaled, releasing a slow and patient pressure from his lungs. _In love_ , Dick thought, divided from Roy only by a thin, permeable layer of cells.

When Dick’s eyes fluttered shut, the indifferent darkness didn’t whisk Roy away.

 

v.

According to the Justice League database, which Dick may or may not have hacked with Roy’s laptop, Donna and Kyle had joined forces once more and become accidental ambassadors for a solar system in another galaxy.

“Great timing,” Dick said, showing Roy the initial mission report, hastily compiled and truncated at the end. “Explains why she’s not picking up, at least.”

“Maybe they’ll bring back space food,” Roy said.

“Maybe. Or maybe they’ll bring back news of impending doom.”

“Aren’t you a ray of sunshine,” Roy said, but he wouldn’t match Dick’s bet when Dick slapped down a twenty, which was more of a Gar habit than a Dick habit anyway.

Still, Dick was torn between engaging Roy in another circular conversation and investigating every angle of the diplomatic crisis in the House of Betrus in Sector 1417. He felt like he was on a professional racetrack without a crash helmet: each step took him forward, accelerating toward some unavoidable, explosive conclusion. He didn't believe in destiny, but he understood that every choice, every misstep and deliberate play, had brought him to this threshold, and maybe that was the only real destiny that existed: to be confined by prior decisions made by former selves, inescapable, unretractable.

The night before Dick left, dinnertime was engulfed by a tension that Lian thankfully failed to notice. She’d developed an infatuation with elephants, and Dick was gratified to share some of his specially curated fun facts to distract from the metaphorical elephant in the room.

Delaying important conversations shouldn’t have been a relief, but avoidance was a skill that Dick and Roy had honed over the years. Dick’s own cowardice filled him with guilt; he hated this, hated that he wanted to manipulate the situation into something that he could control, hated that he couldn’t bring himself to be vulnerable without emotional collateral.

The idea of having a necessary, difficult, hopefully civil conversation terrified him more than that of free-diving into a monster’s gastrointestinal tract. And he'd always believed that he was good with people, that he and Bruce differed in all the ways that mattered, until he realized that he was distancing himself from the situation as Bruce so often did.

After washing the dishes, Dick rapped his knuckles on the door frame of the living room, hard enough to make it sting. Roy froze with one hand on the TV remote. There was a sheen of sweat across his nose and cheeks, like he was standing under a massive spotlight and had forgotten all of his lines.

“Hey,” Dick said eloquently.

The TV screen blipped off. “Hey yourself.”

“Listen,” they began at the same time. They stopped and shifted positions and laughed. “I--”

“I can go first,” Dick offered, but Roy shook his head.

“Listen,” Roy repeated. He cleared his throat. “Dick...”

“Just let me go first,” Dick said, despite not really wanting to.

“Yeah. Yeah. Sure.” Roy waved a hand and sat on the couch. The springs groaned. “Shit.”

Dick joined him. “We’re awful at this.”

“You’re tellin’ me. Look, I don't really wanna hear it, just--make it easy, all right?”

“Excuse me,” Dick said. “But _what_?”

Roy raked both hands over his bristly scalp. “You're breaking up with me, aren't you? This was a little too soon, the family vibes freaked you out, I’m undateable--”

“Who said anything about breaking up?”

“Wait, so you aren’t?”

An inexplicable burst of energy hit Dick like a slap to the face, and he bounced off of the couch. “Roy--we never even talked about dating in the first place!”

“And whose fault is that?” Roy demanded, then looked abashed. “I take that back. All the way back.”

“Fine,” Dick said. He crossed his arms over his chest just to have something to hold. “I just... I liked where we were, Roy. I thought it was good, I didn't want it to change, I didn't want to talk about it. As the past few nights proved, that approach didn’t work at all.”

“Okay, but from where I’m sitting, it _is_ good. It's still good. It's totally--” Roy gestured between them. “It’s great. We're great. Solid.” Dick narrowed his eyes, and Roy winced. “Okay, fine, except for the dating thing. What did you _think_ this was, a vacation?”

“Dating requires anniversaries!”

“So we’ll add anniversaries!”

“That’s not how this works, we can’t skip the ‘will you date me’ conversation!”

“Well--who says??”

“ _I_ says! I mean, _I_ say. I said.”

Dick’s hands trembled, and he tucked them into his armpits, hugging himself tighter. The coffee table seemed surreal with the lights on--innocuous, practical, far removed from some faded nightmare in which Dick held onto Roy and Lian and didn’t let them go, never let them go, not on the medical transport, not en route to the emergency room.

“And I don’t know if now’s the time for the dating conversation,” Dick admitted. “I mean, you’re recovering from a traumatic brain injury. I just wanted to lay out the groundwork, hash out expectations... We shouldn’t make any spur of the moment--”

Agitated, Roy said, “How I feel about you isn’t ‘spur of the moment.’” He wouldn’t meet Dick’s gaze, but he kept tracking Dick’s pacing with his eyes, unable to look away. “Dick--damn it, I know what I want, all right? I’ve been here a long, long time.”

A clean, almost serene panic surged through Dick like a current, not too unlike the calmness that came whenever he prepared to land after a fall. His ears rang in the heavy silence; he wanted to fill the space between them with the right words, but all that he could think of was Roy’s name, which suddenly seemed too big, too complicated to say.

“Okay,” Dick said at last.

“Okay?”

“Okay, Roy.” Trying not to loom, Dick settled on the floor by Roy’s feet and spread his palms wide. “So I guess this is the part where I go: will you date me?”


End file.
